الملخص الإنجليزي
Objectives: To examine the extent to which medical coverage isavailable to discharged leprosy patients in communities. Evidencehas shown that after care services, follow-up visits and nationaldisease prevention programs are important components of medicalrehabilitation to leprosy patients discharged home after treatment.Denying them accessibility to these services could expose them tomultiple disabilities as well as several disease conditions includingHIV/AIDS. These adverse health conditions could be averted ifhealth workers extend healthcare services to discharged leprosypatients. This study was conducted to examine the extent to whichdischarged leprosy patients have access to healthcare services inthe communities.
Methods: All 33 leprosy patients who were fully treated with multidrugtherapy (MDT) and discharged home in the two leprosysettlements in Abia and Ebonyi States of Nigeria were includedin this study. The list of discharged leprosy patients studied andtheir addresses were provided by the leprosy settlements wherethey were treated. Also, snowball-sampling method was used toidentify some of the leprosy patients whose addresses were difficultto locate in the communities. Instruments for data collectionwere questionnaire, interview guide and checklist. These wereadministered because respondents were essentially those with noformal education. Analysis of data was done quantitatively andqualitatively.
Results: Findings showed that 20 (60.6%) of discharged patientsdid not receive health programs like HIV/AIDS prevention orfamily planning. Also, follow-up visits and after-care services werepoor. About 14 (42.4%) of the patients live in dirty and overcrowdedhouses. On the whole, discharged patients were poorly medicallyrehabilitated (mean score: 4.7±1.1 out of total score of 7).
Conclusion: Denying discharged leprosy patients opportunityof accessing health care services could increase prevalence ofinfectious diseases including HIV/AIDS among them. There isneed to extend national prevention programs, follow-up visits,after-care services and free treatment to discharged patients in thecommunities.
